The fabrication of a hand intended to be used as a display member in a timepiece is particularly complex, especially when it concerns a hand intended to equip a high-end timepiece, in which the hand must have an immaculate surface, possibly provided with facets.
Usually, the hands are fabricated from brass, steel, gold, aluminium, or a special alloy. They may be galvanized, covered with paint, oxidized, or untreated when the material used is gold. They are generally produced by machining or by stamping.
One drawback of these display hands is that the materials used have a high density, which implies a high moment of inertia and a high unbalanced force which respectively result in the hand floating and the hand slipping, in the event of a shock.
Moreover, the machining and stamping techniques involve high mechanical stresses, which requires operations of adjusting the shape of the hand to obtain a relatively flat hand.
Yet another drawback is that current hand fabrication techniques cannot produce all the desired forms.